My friends mom was on lithium and it helped for many years.  Her health care provider noticed this was damaging her liver. For the past year she has been on and off  different meds. She is not in good shape.  I heard about this other kind of lithium on a radio show, Lithium Orotate. Here is info from a website that describes the stuff like what I heard on the radio. 

Lithium is the most common element used for stabilizing mood swings, mania and depression. Lithium orotate (the lithium salt of orotic acid) is 20 times more bio-active than other lithium salts, allowing a reduction in dosage greatly reducing the likelihood and severity of potential side effects.

Dr. Nieper reported that 5 mg of lithium orotate are closely equivalent to 100 mg of the carbonate form.

The therapeutic dose of lithium orotate for cases of severe depression is 150 mg/day (1-2 tablets), compared to 900-1800 mg of the prescription forms.

Does anyone have experience with using this?  Are there any known side effects? Do you have any other recomendations?

 

 

 

 

 

I think you know...., I am a recovering schizophrenic and that was supposed to be a joke. 

Of all the intangibles inherent in mania, the one I knew would be most challenging to convey was the sense of slipping into an alternate reality, a parallel universe. My city was the same; I looked the same, but absolutely everything was essentially changed. This was a world with different rules, entirely different emotions, and a foreign approach to life itself. I chewed through experience like a hungry dog. If ever there were a case of “perception being reality,” this was it. The following is excerpted from the chapter of Invisible Driving called “Steps.” Invisible Driving by Alistair McHarg is available from Amazon.com. http//www.invisibledriving.com)

When I began writing Invisible Driving, my memoir of manic depression – http://www.invisibledriving.com - I had no idea if what I wanted to do was possible. I intended to take readers inside the experience of a manic episode, to share the sights, sounds, sensations, and feelings of this totally otherworldly landscape. As the project unfolded I discovered that, though technically very demanding, this was not the hardest part. For the book to make sense it needed a context. So, like a little boy following a bit of string into a dark basement, I traced the manic behavior to its source. Without the assistance of a skilled psychologist this would never have been possible. Also, some unpleasant gazing into the mirror was required. At last I was ready to write the short, “sane” chapters peppered through the manic narrative. These chapters peel away the glitzy and colorful manic behavior until the psychological and emotional truth behind is revealed. I understood mania to be a complex party game the mind plays with itself. The sub-conscious attempts to outsmart the conscious. Emotionally, the id roams like an unchained, hungry beast while the ego is freed from restrictions, able at last to roar with implacable grandeur. The super-ego, usually so robust among civilized, urban types like me, has about as much authority as a crossing guard. I could see that in mania much was revealed, however unintentionally. But I also marveled at the mind’s way of saving itself, even when it was so clearly out of balance. I came away from the experience with a newfound respect both for where the mind is able to go, and, the nuanced machinations it employs to get what it needs. This chapter is entitled, Won’t Somebody Please Notice That I’m Sick?

Back at home with a brain that boiled like a cauldron of Louisiana gumbo. What to, what to, what to do? Zelda bubbled up to the surface. Used to work together at an agency, still spoke now and again. Liked to feed me freelance. Didn’t see her much, used the phone. Had always been a chemistry between us which I’d been very careful to discourage. Married chicks had always been off limits, police barricade, don’t cross. And if that were not sufficiently sufficient, and it were, she was moody, spoiled, and unpredictable. Cheese not squarely on the cracker. But to quote the redoubtable Lord Buckley, “If you get to it, and you cannot do it, there you jolly well are, aren’t you?” Which is another way of saying, I was looking at all career options, full-time freelance, free time full-lance, ad copywriting was a favorite. Half a dozen thoroughbred accounts in the barn and I could be completely independent. Fuck the corporate world and how they did me, wouldn’t treat a stepchild like that, but like they always say, he who laughs last, laughs flaff flaff flaff flaff flaff. With projects pouring in from Zelda, and all the other angels I would meet, prosperity was unavoidable.